The advent of modern image capturing devices equipped with cameras in wider economic ranges has made image capturing devices popular in both the commercial as well as the domestic markets. For any photography enthusiast, the presence of impulsive movements, such as sudden movements of objects, any unwanted moving objects in a scene or unpredicted appearances of objects in a scene to be captured is a major obstacle. For example, a hastily moving stranger in the scene or a speeding car can ruin a good shot and can annoy a photographer. Eventually, a captured image may require a retouch on a computer, which is generally performed offline. However, current mobile devices such a mobile phone, a Personal Digital Assistant (PDA) or a tablet are equipped with a cameras and are supported by a computationally efficient processor. This enables instantaneous processing of the captured image by applying various image processing techniques to provide a processed output image. Based on image processing tools applied on the captured image, the processed image is enhanced with features such as noise removal, low illumination noise removal, ghosting effect removal and object removal, which effectively enhance the photography experience of the photographer. Photography features in the image capturing device such as elimination of undesired objects in the captured image to provide an output image free of undesired objects is desirable and is one of the sought after features by a user.
Some existing methods provide techniques to replace a selected region in a selected image with a corresponding region from one of other captured images of a scene. These techniques can be applied to applications, and include moving object removal. However, with existing methods of blending a replaced region with surrounding regions of the selected image lacks a natural blending effect. Thus, the processed image displayed may not provide a great photography experience to the photographer. The existing methods mostly perform identification of the undesired object based on an external selection input signal. Moreover, for automatic detection of the undesired object, the existing methods are restricted to mostly human figures in the captured image.
Therefore, a more effective solution for capturing an image, without a presence of moving objects therein, and for the ability to instantaneously display a natural-looking image to the user, is needed.
The above information is presented as background information only to assist with an understanding of the present disclosure. No determination has been made, and no assertion is made, as to whether any of the above might be applicable as prior art with regard to the present disclosure.